1. The Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method and system for spot-dyeing textiles. Specifically, the present illustrated embodiment(s) involve(s) the use of textile dyes, representing each of the three primary colors, color filters designed to transmit a narrow range of light corresponding to the three primary colors to facilitate matching the textile colors, and comparator gray scale cards to facilitate the determination of correct dilution levels of dye concentrates.
2. The Relevant Art
Many cleaning agents or products are damaging to dyes used in coloring textiles, such as carpet. When these damaging compounds come into contact with carpet, the carpet dyes will fade or completely discolor. A common cleaning product that is known to damage carpet dyes is an aqueous solution of hypochlorite, commonly known as chlorine bleach. Acne medication, containing benzoyl peroxide, is also known to cause damage to carpet dyes upon contact.
As a result, several carpet-cleaning services have developed spot-dyeing kits to re-color damaged areas or spots. Typically, these re-coloring dyes are added together in a solution until a color match is achieved. One particular kit provides more than a dozen different dye colors that can be added together in any sequence and amount to try and match the missing color on the carpet. This process is often extremely difficult because matching a solution color to the carpet color is not a process easily performed with the naked eye. Often, the re-coloring dyes look slightly different in solution than on a solid substrate, such as when applied to carpet fibers. To help overcome this, an uncolored piece of test carpet can be utilized. Dying this uncolored test carpet with the dye solution can help one discern what the dye solution will look like on a carpet fiber.
There are, however, still other problems associated with the process described above. Often, when the bleaching agent attacks a carpet dye, it will bleach the dyes most susceptible to bleaching. Some dyes in the carpet are not susceptible to bleaching and will remain unbleached. This means that a bleach spot on a carpet may leave the spot yellow or red or green or any other color other than colorless (white). In this case, trying to match the color on a colorless piece of carpet may be difficult, at best.
Other known carpet spot-dying procedures include the use of adding primary colors in sequence to a spot under naked eye inspection until a match is achieved. However, this method also involves a large amount of guesswork and/or trial and error in order to formulate a relatively close match. As a result, this method can be very time consuming and may also require re-bleaching a stained area for re-coloring where a mistake in judging the proper addition of colors has occurred.
Thus, it can be clearly recognized that there is a need for a method and system for spot-dyeing textiles, such as carpet, clothing, leather, or any other textile, that is easy to apply for any user, that reduces the amount of time required to achieve a color match, and that increases the accuracy of achieving a match while minimizing the margin of error.